The letters of Abelard and Heloise are, now, among the best known documents
of early romantic love. From the thirteenth century on, there are references
to the couple by multiple authors. With their inclusion by Jean de Meun
in his Roman de la Rose (1280), their immortality as symbols was
ensured. (Note, however, Betty Radice's opinion that it was Petrarch, who
owned one of nine surviving manuscripts, who first showed a "genuine interest"
[Radice 48].)

The textual tradition of the letters is problematic, with none of the
nine known manuscripts dating from before 1350 [Radice 46]. This has lead
to numerous modern theories as to whether they are genuine, edited, or
all written by Abelard. Following Barbara Newman's article in Virile
Woman to WomanChrist: Studies in Medieval Religion and Literature,
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995), 46-75, in which
she both argues for the letters' authenticity, and discusses why it was
called into question, the current consensus (although not unanimous) seems
to be that they are genuine.

[From an email post by Rob Helmerichs:] In his recent book, John
Marenbon begins his chapter on the authenticity of the letters as follows:
"The authorship of the letters between Abelard and Heloise has been the
most controversial question in Abelardian scholarship for over a century."
[The Philosophy of Peter Abelard, (New York: Cambridge Univeristy
Press, 1997), 82-93.] He then goes on to summarize the controversy in a
pretty balanced manner.
There are three sides:

A) They are real:
B) Abelard wrote them all;
C) The whole shebang is a later literary creation.

Every once in a while a new article/book appears, stating the author's
case and assuring us that this is the final word, but it never is, and
since no contemporary manuscripts exist, there will always be room for
doubt!

The first English translation was by Joseph Barrington in 1787. The
version here was issued in a limited edition in 1925 by C.K. Scott Moncrief
(the translator of Proust), based on the edition of the letters printed
in Migne, Patrologia Latina. As Radice - the translator of the quite
readable (but copyrighted) Penguin version - notes, Moncrieff's translation
is idiosyncratic: "it wavers uneasily between the cadences of the Authorized
Version [and] a literal transcription of the original Latin sentence structure",
[Radice 54]. Some readers, however, might not find this style entirely
unpleasant.

Bibliography

The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, trans. and intro. by Betty Radice,
(New York: Penguin, 1974)

Barrow, Julia, Charles Burnett, & David Luscombe, "A Checklist of the
Manuscripts Containing the Writings of Peter Abelard and Heloise and Other
Works Closely Associated with Abelard and His School", Revue d'histoire
des textes 14/15 (1984/1983), pp. 183-302.

Dronke, Peter, Abelard and Heloise in Medieval Testimonies, Glasgow:
The University of Glasgow Press, 1976.

Newman, Barbara, "Authority, Authenticity, and the Repression of Heloise",
in From Virile Woman to WomanChrist: Studies in Medieval Religion and
Literature, (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995),
46-75

Pernoud, Regine, Heloise et Abelard, Paris: A. Michel, 1970.

Robertson, D.W, Abelard and Heloise, New York: Dial Press, 1972.

Southern, Richard, W., "The Letters of Abelard and Heloise", in Medieval
Humanism and Other Studies, Oxford: Blackwell, 1970.

Truc, Gonzague, Abelard avec et sans Helosie, Paris: A. Foyard,
1956.

Waddell, Helen, Peter Abelard, (a novel), London: Constable, 1933.

Wight, Orlando Williams,. The Romance of Abelard and Heloise, New
York: D. Appleton and Co., 1853.

It would obviously be impossible for any translation of these Letters
to be published in England without some reference, whether, by dedication
or otherwise, to the one man using our language who has taken the matter
up within living memory, and the only man who at any time has made the
dry bones of ABELARD and HELOISE reincarnate themselves in a far livelier
garment of romantic flesh, I fancy, than was ever theirs in their twelfth
century existence: but there is an especial reason why I must dedicate
this translation to you, as although I hasten to acquit you of any responsibility
for the actual volume, it was over your table in Ebury Street that I had
it suggested to me, for the first and (I would now wager) the last time,
that I might write a book - one of the literary-historical kind - about
the cloistered lovers and their correspondence.

What you told me then, had the speaker been any but yourself, must
have fallen upon deaf ears; for, to tell the truth, I had never read the
Letters, I had no intention of reading them, and I assumed that their problems
were sufficiently well-known already to persons less illiterate than myself:
but I do remember your telling me that the First Letter was, in your opinion,
from the hand of Jean de Meung, a literary forgery, designed to create
a background and a justification for the rest. You then knocked down the
whole card castle by reminding (you were really informing) me that the
whole of the evidence for the story of the lovers was contained in this
First Letter, as indeed the whole compass of your own marvellous romance
is contained in the period before Heloise went to Paraclete, that is a
year at least before even the First Letter purports to have been written.
But you did not then tell me, of what I discovered only after Mr. Chapman
had coerced me into undertaking this version, of a far greater and more
impudent forgery, the English "translation" (still on sale) of the Letters
published some two hundred years ago. Whether this work was forged in England,
or, as seems to me likely, is translated from a French forgery of the late
seventeenth century, I have no means, here in Pisa, of discovering. It
consists of six letters, the first of them entitled Abelard to Philintus,
following more or less the line of the History of the Calamities, though
with such startling interpolations as the following:

"I was infinitely perplexed what course to take; at last
I applied myself to Heloise's singing master. The shining metal, which
had no effect on Agaton, charmed him: he was excellently qualified for
conveying a billet with the greatest dexterity and secrecy. He delivered
one of mine to Heloise, who, according to my appointment, met me at the
end of the garden, I having scaled the wall with a ladder of ropes. I confess
to you all my failings, Philintus; how would my enemies, Champeaux and
Anselm, have triumphed, had they seen this redoubted philosopher in such
a wretched condition. Well! I met my soul's joy - my Heloise! I shall not
transcribe our transports, they were not long, for the first news Heloise
acquainted me with plunged me into a thousand distractions. A floating
Delos was to be sought for, where she might be safely delivered of a burden
she began already to feel. Without losing much time in debating, I made
her presently quit the Canon's house and at break of day depart for Brittany;
where she, like another goddess, gave the world another Apollo, which my
sister take care of."

Of this specimen of twelfth century literature its most recent editor (a lady who seems not to have studied the inside of the Latin volume) writes:
"Of course the authenticity of the letters has been questioned, but no
human being can read them and not know them to be genuine."

This may not seem a very serious matter, but it is serious in this
respect, that people who have read only the traditional English version
of the Letters must have formed a wholly different conception of the character
of the lovers from theirs who have studied, however casually, the Latin
text.

The former kind will be surprised to learn that Abelard did not inspire
a hopeless passion in Heloise's maid, already courted as she was by a rich
abbot and a courtier, "to say nothing of a young officer"; that he never
said: "Pyramus and Thisbe's discovery of the crack in the wall was but
a slight representation of our love and its sagacity"; and that the irregularities
of conventional life at Paraclete did not oblige Heloise to write: "I walk
my rounds every night and make those I catch abroad return to their chambers;
for I remember all the adventures that happened in the monasteries near
Paris."

But let us return to the question of the First Letter, which you
regard, you tell me, as "a piece of book making," and of the Second, which
you say was "certainly touched to make it fit on." It seems to me that
here there are two things to be said: first, that if the Letter to a Friend
be a forgery, it is a remarkably clever impersonation on the forger's part
of Abelard as he reveals himself in the later Letters. Only the irrepressible
young prig who insisted on lecturing impromptu upon the interpretation
of Ezekiel, and expected his better instructed seniors then to sit under
him, could have grown into the intolerable old egoist who could write to
his wife (in the Fifth Letter) of his own emasculation: "Neither grieve
that thou wert the cause of so great a good, for which thou needst not
doubt that thou wert principally created by God." And what artistry to
make him seek to comfort his friend in an unnamed affliction by writing
exclusively about his own affairs. On the other hand, it was careless on
the forger's part, if he composed the First Letter, having already the
text of the other seven to his hand, to make Abelard say that he had frequently
visited Heloise and her companions at Paraclete, when Heloise's chief ground
of complaint against her husband, and one that he admits to be valid in
the opening lines of the Third Letter, is that he has never come to see
her since their conversion.

Then you made the point, in writing to me, that there was, or had
been, some obscurity in the public mind as to the reason for Abelard's
sending Heloise back to Argenteuil after their marriage. But as to this,
I think, he makes himself clear enough in the First, and again in the Fifth
Letters. He first offered to marry Heloise, in order to pacify her uncle.
He married her, against her will and advice, but, as he thought always
of his own interests only, made her keep their marriage secret, so that
his career as a teacher and potential churchman might not be jeopardised.
The uncle, unfortunately, makes the fact of the marriage known; Heloise
denies it; the uncle maltreats her; Abelard removes her from his custody
and sends her back, as a pensionnaire, to Argenteuil. He has no thought,
however, of breaking off his relations with her, and in the Fifth Letter
reminds her how those relations were resumed (uncomfortably enough, one
would think, not to say sacrilegiously) in the refectory at Argenteuil.
The uncle, however, whose sole and very natural motive is hatred of Abelard,
concludes that he is "putting away" his wife with the intention of himself
also seeking orders, and takes the one step, short of murder, which must
make it impossible for Abelard ever to be admitted to the priesthood. >From
this point, our hero's life may be summed up in the poignant words of the
fair-complexioned man in Candide: "O che sciagura d'essere senza coglioni!"

There is an inevitable change in his nature. First of all, his whole
affection, which seems never to have deserved a politer name than lust,
for Heloise abruptly ceases. As her husband, he compels her to take the
veil at Argenteuil before he himself retires to the Abbey of Saint-Denis.
And when, in later years, she writes him her three immortal letters, his
irritation and boredom are manifest in every line of his replies. In his
final letter, when dealing with the use of wine in convents, he actually
transcribes several pages of her previous letter to him, as though forgetting
that it was she who had written them. In his other relations also, his
character is enfeebled. True, the young prig who lectured his seniors upon
Ezekiel survives in the middle-aged prig (how curiously like certain Anglican
priests to-day) who points out to his fellow monks of Saint-Denis that
their founder may not, after all, have been the Areopagite; but the young
cocksure who confuted William of Champeaux and laughed in the venerable
beard of Anselm has dwindled into a querulous craven, constantly in terror
of persecution, poison and the rest, magnifying his dangers with a buoyant
indifference to his correspondent's natural anxiety, and piteously appealing
to her for an eventual Christian burial. His once famous teaching, too,
has become a string of garrulous quotations, many of them singularly inept.

There is nothing more to be said, except that the lovers, I find,
owe some part, at least, of their reputation in our Island to the assumption
that they were never legally married; a British spinster, resident for
many years in the Antipodes, to whom I was speaking recently about the
Letters, was genuinely shocked to learn that their writers repose beneath
the same covering in Père Lachaise. When I assured her that, before
burial, they had been man and wife, her face fell still farther. But the
great majority of people in England think, if they think about the matter
at all, that Abelard and Heloise are fictional characters invented, my
dear George Moore, and very beneficially invented by yourself. This volume
will, as I need not assure you, do little or nothing to dispel their illusion,
or to diminish the reputation of Heloise and Abelard. Such as it is, pray
accept the offering of my part in it, with every good wish, upon this your
onomastico,

To her master, nay father, to her husband, nay brother; his
handmaid, nay daughter, his spouse, nay sister: to ABELARD, HELOISE.

Your letter written to a friend for his comfort, beloved, was lately
brought to me by chance. Seeing at once from the title that it was yours,
I began the more ardently to read it in that the writer was so dear to
me, that I might at least be refreshed by his words as by a picture of
him whose presence I have lost. Almost every line of that letter, I remember,
was filled with gall and wormwood, to wit those that related the miserable
story of our conversion, and thy unceasing crosses, my all.

Thou didst indeed fulfil in that letter what at the beginning of it
thou hadst promised thy friend, namely that in comparison with thy troubles
he should deem his own to be nothing or but a small matter. After setting
forth thy former persecution by thy masters, then the outrage of supreme
treachery upon thy body, thou has turned thy pen to the execrable jealousy
and inordinate assaults of thy fellow-pupils also, namely Alberic of Rheims
and Lotulph the Lombard; and what by their instigation was done to that
famous work of thy theology, and what to thyself, as it were condemned
to prison, thou hast not omitted.

From these thou comest to the machinations of thine Abbot and false
brethren, and the grave detraction of thee by those two pseudo-apostles,
stirred up against thee by the aforesaid rivals, and to the scandal raised
by many of the name of Paraclete given to the oratory in departure from
custom: and then, coming to those intolerable and still continuing persecutions
of thy life, thou hast carried to the end the miserable story of that cruellest
of extortioners and those wickedest of monks, whom thou callest thy sons.
Which things I deem that no one can read or hear with dry eyes, for they
renewed in fuller measure my griefs, so diligently did they express each
several part, and increased them the more, in that thou relatedst that
thy perils are still growing, so that we are all alike driven to despair
of thy life, and every day our trembling hearts and throbbing bosoms await
the latest rumour of thy death.

And so in His Name Who still protects thee in a certain measure for
Himself, in the Name of Christ, as His handmaids and thine, we beseech
thee to deign to inform us by frequent letters of those shipwrecks in which
thou still art tossed, that thou mayest have us at least, who alone have
remained to thee, as partners in they grief or joy. For they are wont to
bring some comfort to a grieving man who grieve with him, and any burden
that is laid on several is borne more easily, or transferred. And if this
tempest should have been stilled for a space, then all the more hasten
thou to write, the more pleasant thy letter will be. But whatsoever it
be of which thou mayest write to us, thou wilt confer no small remedy on
us; if only in this that thou wilt shew thyself to be keeping us in mind.

For how pleasant are the letters of absent friends Seneca himself by
own example teaches us, writing thus in a certain passage to his friend
Lucilius: "Because thou writest me often, I thank thee. For in the one
way possible thou shewest thyself to me. Never do I receive a letter from
thee, but immediately we are together." If the portraits of our absent
friends are pleasant to us, which renew our memory of them and relieve
our regret for their absence by a false and empty consolation, how much
more pleasant are letters which bring us the written characters of the
absent friend. But thanks be to God, that in this way at least no jealousy
prevents thee from restoring to us thy presence, no difficulty impedes
thee, no neglect (I beseech thee) need delay thee.

Thou has written to thy friend the comfort of a long letter, considering
his difficulties, no doubt, but treating of thine own. Which diligently
recording, whereas thou didst intend them for his comfort, thou hast added
greatly to our desolation, and while thou wert anxious to heal his wounds
has inflicted fresh wounds of grief on us and made our former wounds to
ache again. Heal, I beseech thee, the wounds that thou thyself hast given,
who art so busily engaged in healing the wounds given by others. Thou has
indeed humoured thy friend and comrade, and paid the debt as well of friendship
as of comradeship; but by a greater debt thou hast bound thyself to us,
whom it behoves thee to call not friends but dearest friends, not comrades
but daughters, or by a sweeter and a holier name, if any can be conceived.

As to the greatness of the debt which binds thee to us neither argument
nor evidence is lacking, that any doubt be removed; and if all men be silent
the fact itself cries aloud. For of this place thou, after God, art the
sole founder, the sole architect of this oratory, the sole builder of this
congregation. Nothing didst thou build here on the foundations of others.
All that is here is thy creation. This wilderness, ranged only by wild
beasts or by robbers, had known no habitation of men, had contained no
dwelling. In the very lairs of the beasts, in the very lurking places of
the robbers, where the name of God is not heard, thou didst erect a divine
tabernacle, and didst dedicate the Holy Ghost's own temple. Nothing didst
thou borrow from the wealth of kings or princes, when thou couldst have
obtained so much and from so many, that whatsoever was wrought here might
be ascribed to thee alone. Clerks or scholars flocking in haste to thy
teaching ministered to thee all things needful, and they who lived upon
ecclesiastical benefices, who knew not how to make but only how to receive
oblations, and had hands for receiving, not for giving, became lavish and
importunate here in the offering of oblations.

Thine, therefore, truly thine is this new plantation in the divine plan,
for the plants of which, still most tender, frequent irrigation is necessary
that they may grow. Frail enough, from the weakness of the feminine nature,
is this plantation; it is infirm, even were it not new. Wherefore it demands
more diligent cultivation and more frequent, after the words of the Apostle:
"I have planted, Apollos watched; but God gave the increase." The Apostle
had planted, by the doctrines of his preaching, and had established in
the Faith the Corinthians, to whom he wrote. Thereafter Apollos, the Apostle's
own disciple, had watered them with sacred exhortations, and so by divine
grace the increment of virtues was bestowed on them. Thou are tending the
vineyard of another's vine which thou didst not plant, which is turned
to thine own bitterness, with admonitions often wasted and holy sermons
preached in vain. Think of what thou owest to thine own, who thus spendest
thy care on another's. Thou teachest and reprovest rebels, nor gainest
than aught. In vain before the swine dost thou scatter the pearls of divine
eloquence. Who givest so much thought to the obstinate, consider what thou
owest to the obedient. Who bestowest so much on thine enemies, meditate
what thou owest to thy daughters. And to say nothing of the rest, think
by what a debt thou are bound to me, that what thou owest to the community
of devoted women thou mayest pay more devotedly to her who is thine alone.

How many grave treatises in the teaching, or in the exhortation, or
for the comfort of holy women the holy Fathers composed, and with what
diligence they composed them, thine excellence knows better than our humility.
Wherefore to no little amazement thine oblivion moves the tender beginnings
of our conversion, that neither by reverence for God, nor by love of us,
nor by the examples of the holy Fathers hast thou been admonished to attempt
to comfort me, as I waver and am already crushed by prolonged grief, either
by speech in thy presence or by a letter in thine absence. And yet thou
knowest thyself to be bound to me by a debt so much greater in that thou
are tied to me more closely by the pact of the nuptial sacrament; and that
thou art the more beholden to me in that I ever, as is known to all, embraced
thee with an unbounded love. Thou knowest, dearest, all men know what I
have lost in thee, and in how wretched a case that supreme and notorious
betrayal took me myself also from me with thee, and that my grief is immeasurably
greater from the manner in which I lost thee than from the loss of thee.

And the greater the cause of grief, the greater the remedies of comfort
to be applied. Not, however, by another, but by thee thyself, that thou
who art alone in the cause of my grief may be alone in the grace of my
comfort. For it is thou alone that canst make me sad, canst make me joyful
or canst comfort me. And it is thou alone that owest me this great debt,
and for this reason above all that I have at once performed all things
that you didst order, till that when I could not offend thee in anything
I had the strength to lose myself at thy behest. And what is more, and
strange it is to relate, to such madness did my love turn that what alone
it sought it cast from itself without hope of recovery when, straightway
obeying thy command, I changed both my habit and my heart, that I might
shew thee to be the one possessor both of my body and of my mind. Nothing
have I ever (God wot) required of thee save myself, desiring thee purely,
not what was thine. Not for the pledge of matrimony, nor for any dowry
did I look, not my own passions or wishes but thine (as thou thyself knowest)
was I zealous to gratify.

And if the name of wife appears more sacred and more valid, sweeter
to me is ever the word friend, or, if thou be not ashamed, concubine or
whore. To wit that the more I humbled myself before thee the fuller grace
I might obtain from thee, and so also damage less the fame of thine excellence.
And thou thyself wert not wholly unmindful of that kindness in the letter
of which I have spoken, written to thy friend for his comfort. Wherein
thou hast not disdained to set forth sundry reasons by which I tried to
dissuade thee from our marriage, from an ill-starred bed; but wert silent
as to many, in which I preferred to love to wedlock, freedom to a bond.
I call God to witness, if Augustus, ruling over the whole world, were to
deem me worthy of the honour of marriage, and to confirm the whole world
to me, to be ruled by me forever, dearer to me and of greater dignity would
it seem to be called thy strumpet than his empress.

For it is not by being richer or more powerful that a man becomes better;
one is a matter of fortune, the other of virtue. Nor should she deem herself
other than venal who weds a rich man rather than a poor, and desires more
things in her husband than himself. Assuredly, whomsoever this concupiscence
leads into marriage deserves payment rather than affection; for it is evident
that she goes after his wealth and not the man, and is willing to prostitute
herself, if she can, to a richer. As the argument advanced (in Aeschines)
by the wise Aspasia to Xenophon and his wife plainly convinces us. When
the wise woman aforesaid had propounded this argument for their reconciliation,
she concluded as follows: "For when ye have understood this, that there
is not a better man nor a happier woman on the face of the earth; then
ye will ever and above all things seek that which ye think the best; thou
to be a husband of so excellent a wife, and she to be married to so excellent
a husband." A blessed sentiment, assuredly, and more than philosophic,
expressing wisdom itself rather than philosophy. A holy error and a blessed
fallacy among the married, that a perfect love should preserve their bond
of matrimony unbroken, not so much by the continence of their bodies as
by the purity of their hearts. But what error shews to the rest of women
the truth has made manifest to me. Since what they thought of their husbands,
that I, that the entire world not so much believed as knew of thee. So
that the more genuine my love was for thee, the further it was removed
from error.

For who among kings or philosophers could equal thee in fame? What kingdom
or city or village did not burn to see thee? Who I ask, did not hasten
to gaze upon thee when thou appearedst in public, nor on thy departure
with straining neck and fixed eye follow thee? What wife, what maiden did
not yearn for thee in thine absence, nor burn in thy presence? What queen
or powerful lady did not envy me my joys and my bed? There were two things,
I confess, in thee especially, wherewith thou couldst at once captivate
the heart of any woman; namely the arts of making songs and of singing
them. Which we know that other philosophers have seldom followed. Wherewith
as with a game, refreshing the labour of philosophic exercise, thou has
left many songs composed in amatory measure or rhythm, which for the suavity
both of words and of tune being oft repeated, have kept thy name without
ceasing on the lips of all; since even illiterates the sweetness of thy
melodies did not allow to forget thee. It was on this account chiefly that
women sighed for love of thee. And as the greater part of thy songs descanted
of our love, they spread my fame in a short time through many lands, and
inflamed the jealousy of many against me. For what excellence of mind or
body did not adorn thy youth? What woman who envied me then does not my
calamity now compel to pity one deprived of such delights? What man or
women, albeit an enemy at first, is not now softened by the compassion
due to me?

And, though exceedingly guilty, I am, as thou knowest, exceeding innocent.
For it is not the deed but the intention that makes the crime. It is not
what is done but the spirit in which it is done that equity considers.
And in what state of mind I have ever been towards thee, only thou, who
hast knowledge of it, canst judge. To thy conideration I commit all, I
yield in all things to thy testimony. Tell me one thing only, if thou canst,
why, after our conversion, which thou alone didst decree, I am fallen into
such neglect and oblivion with thee that I am neither refreshed by thy
speech and presence nor comforted by a letter in thine absence. Tell me,
one thing only, if thou canst, or let me tell thee what I feel, nay what
all suspect. Concupiscence joined thee to me rather than affection, the
ardour of desire rather than love. When therefore what thou desiredst ceased,
all that thou hadst exhibited at the same time failed. This, most beloved,
is not mine only but the conjecture of all, not peculiar but common, not
private but public. Would that it seemed thus to me only, and thy love
found others to excuse it, by whom my grief might be a little quieted.
Would that I could invent reasons by which in excusing thee I might cover
in some measure my own vileness.

Give thy attention, I beseech thee, to what I demand; and thou wilt
see this to be a small matter and most easy for thee. While I am cheated
of thy presence, at least by written words, whereof thou hast an abundance,
present to me the sweetness of thine image. In vain may I expect thee to
be liberal in things if I must endure thee niggardly in words. Until now
I believed that I deserved more from thee when I had done all things for
thee, persevering still in obedience to thee. Who indeed as a girl was
allured to the asperity of monastic conversation not by religious devotion
but by thy command alone. Wherein if I deserve nought from thee, thou mayest
judge my labour to have been vain. No reward for this may I expect from
God, for the love of Whom it is well known that I did not anything. When
thou hastenedst to God, I followed thee in the habit, nay preceded thee.
For as though mindful of the wife of Lot, who looked back from behind him,
thou deliveredst me first to the sacred garments and monastic profession
before thou gavest thyself to God. And for that in this one thing thou
shouldst have had little trust in me I vehemently grieved and was ashamed.
For I (God wot) would without hesitation precede or follow thee to the
Vulcanian fires according to thy word. For not with me was my heart, but
with thee. But now, more than ever, if it be not with thee, it is nowhere.
For without thee it cannot anywhere exist. But so act that it may be well
with thee, I beseech thee. And well with thee will it be if it find thee
propitious, if thou give love for love, little for much, words for deeds.
Would that thy love, beloved, had less trust in me, that it might be more
anxious! But the more confident I have made thee in the past, the more
neglectful now I find thee. Remember, I beseech thee, what I have done,
and pay heed to what thou owest me. While with thee I enjoyed carnal pleasures,
many were uncertain whether I did so from love or from desire. But now
the end shews in what spirit I began. I have forbidden myself all pleasures
that I might obey thy will. I have reserved nothing for myself, save this,
to be now entirely thine. Consider therefore how great is thine injustice,
if to me who deserve more thou payest less, nay nothing at all, especially
when it is a small thing that is demanded of thee, and right easy for thee
to perform.

And so in His Name to whom thou has offered thyself, before God I beseech
thee that in whatsoever way thou canst thou restore to me thy presence,
to wit by writing me some word of comfort. To this end alone that, thus
refreshed, I may give myself with more alicrity to the service of God.
When in time past thou soughtest me out for temporal pleasures, thou visitedst
me with endless letters, and by frequent songs didst set they Heloise on
the lips of all men. With me every public place, each house resounded.
How more rightly shouldst thou excite me now towards God, whom thou excitedst
then to desire. Consider, I beseech thee, what thou owest me, pay heed
to what I demand; and my long letter with a brief ending I conclude. Farewell,
my all.

Source: The Letters of Abelard and Heloise, translated
from the Latin by C.K. Scott Moncrieff , (New York: 1925)
Made available by Miss MariLi Pooler, Brooklyn NY , goldhatted@mindspring.com

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